View source for Blankley v Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust (2014) EWHC 168 (QB)

{{Case
|Date=2014/02/05
|NCN=[2014] EWHC 168 (QB)
|ICLR=[2014] WLR(D) 141
|ICLR ID=2011207989
|Other citations=138 BMLR 30, [2014] 1 WLR 2683, [2014] 2 All ER 1104, [2014] 2 Costs LR 320, (2014) 138 BMLR 30, [2014] WLR 2683, [2014] MHLO 142
|Court=High Court (Queen's Bench Division)
|Judges=Phillips, Campbell, Greg Cox
|Parties=Diann Blankley, Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust
|Judicial history=* [[Blankley v Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust (2015) EWCA Civ 18]]
* [[Blankley v Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust (2014) EWHC 168 (QB)]]
|Sentence=Loss of litigation capacity
|Summary="These costs appeals raise the question of whether, where a party loses mental capacity in the course of proceedings, such loss of capacity has the automatic and immediate effect of terminating their solicitor's retainer. The question is currently of particular importance for solicitors conducting personal injury claims pursuant to conditional fee agreements entered into before 1 April 2013, in respect of which success fees continue to recoverable from defendants ... If such an agreement is found to have terminated by reason of the supervening incapacity of the claimant ... it would not now be possible to replicate the effect of the original contractual arrangements between solicitor and client given that success fees are not generally recoverable in respect of agreement made on or after 1 April 2013 ... No matter how short the period of incapacity ... nor how quickly a deputy was appointed by the Court of Protection in respect of the claimant, the original CFA would be lost and could not, in real terms, be replaced. ... For the reasons set out below, I have reached the ... conclusion ... that the intervening incapacity of a party does not frustrate or otherwise terminate a solicitor's retainer. Whilst such incapacity does have the effect of removing the authority of the solicitor to act on behalf of the party lacking capacity for the duration of that incapacity, such authority can be restored when a deputy is appointed and provides instructions to the solicitors in that capacity, or otherwise if and when the claimant regains capacity. There is no reason, as a matter of authority or legal principle, why an inability to instruct solicitors in the intervening period (which may be quite short) should be taken to have the effect of immediately ending a solicitor's retainer."
|Subject=Litigation friend cases
|News=No
|RSS pubdate=2023/10/13 08:40:03 PM
}}